Diamond_Jim

An aside... Liverpool played Man U yesterday in a pre season friendly in Michigan.Crowd of 105k at a sold out stadium. Man U played the kids. Amazing what people will pay to see these teams play. Another aside... apparently Mexico plays more times in the USA than in Mexico itself because they make so much more money than when they play in Mexico

The spare seats you were seeing were the ones allocated to the friends of FIFA ( the various Football associations etc). I suspect in the past these were sold for big money and who knows who pocketed the profits. With the apparent corruption crackdown may be a lot of the associations didn't dare scalp the tickets. I can assure you every game was a pre game sell out. Moscow is a great city and I suspect St Petersburg is even better. It is relatively easy to fly from Dubai to all the Russian cities and then move westwards. Flydubai (the low cost carrier owned by Emirates is good value.) Feel free to PM me if you want some other travel tips about the area. PS:I went with my son and boy did he enjoy the party !!

The Russian people made it a great tournament WWS. Won't forget South Korea beating Germany and France beating Argentina. Lucky to see both live along with three other matches including the Aussies going down to France. God help us if they ever allow vuvuzelas at the AFL. Not to mention Colombian football fans (don't think any of them know how to sit down and watch a game.) Could highly recommend Russia as a tourist venue. Extremely good value by comparison to Western Europe

tend to agree with you AF

Everytime I look at the ladder it is an amazing logjam from 3 to 11. So many permutations are possible. Anyone done the analysis on intra 3-11 games (8 point games) .. we have 3 of them. Collingwood have two.

Great point George That last quarter requires some analysis from both sides though perhaps some latitude can be shown given the rain and the apparent wind. Not having a sweeper back cost us that first goal (may have been the second) in the final quarter. Great win and onto next week to consolidate.

wow ...is that stat correct? If so that is monstrous or we are doing something very wrong in the skills department One small positive this year is that Clarrie is not getting pinged for throwing.I suppose the umpires now recognise skill even though the natural eye may be too slow to see it

thank you Chookrat for your optimistic prediction. Sadly we all know it could well turn out to be true ?

Well thats's one of the three we needed. Way off a given that we can find the other two. Need to play smart against GCS. Percentage is irrelevant (we are miles in front of everyone else) so a nice regulation 30 point win would be nice. Get a good break in Q1 and then just close out the game

Dogs deserve it but fascinating that they are paid by the State Government to play in Ballarat but we have to go to NT to get our dollars. Would love to be on a deal to play in Mildura instead of Darwin

do we ever have a clue.... when you are up by five goals you tweak the game plan to deliver the desired result. Sometimes you take more risk but when your season is on the line you dial down the risk meter. Goodwin is a babe in the woods sometimes

Now time to implement the old plan B and counterpunch. No open backlines like last week please

should never have been selected

they managed to kick straight the day they played us

Prescient so far BB.

Woke up to the Blood Red Moon over the ocean this morning. Must be an omen for something.

sorry might be another team but in any event the thought of the Bombers making the finals like last year and we don't is not good for my psyche

nah.... Essendon has an easy run home and we need to stop that momentum

Buddy has next year at most by the looks of things

2 goals in 40 seconds before half time...... and I thought we were bad. And before it happened Bruce said ... the Swans know exactly how much time to ?go

Shows the problems of appointing an untried coach. We were his lab experiment. Hopefully the current coach doesn't repeat the exercise

Spartacus was Thracian.... a complex area in today's political system akin to drafting a full forward from New Zealand

yeah a little linear in his approach to the game. Mind you when he got together with Archimedes on the wing the game really flowed. Certainly never sank in my opinion.

unfortunately while our VFL team may be a winning combination at VFL level it has been a relative failure in the area of skill improvement for its members. Other than Weideman in respect of whom the jury is still well out and our two additions this year in Petty and Baker(too early) hard to pick a player other than Stretch who has genuinely put up his hand for a spot. JKH's form improvement in the VFL was only recent. Five or six weeks back you can read the posts about him going through the motions. Would like to see much more emphasis next year on skill improvement even if it comes at the expense of losing a few games. The days of rejoicing at a win in the reserves are well and truly gone albeit on a nice day there is nothing more enjoyable than going to an old suburban stadium with your comfortable chair.

yep....the old midfield cupboard at Casey is remarkably bare